efore. It might come to them at any time, they knew.
Its spirit sounded in the dirges of the waves along the shore, yet, none
the less, for time or fate, or moan of solemn wave, grew this exceeding
mystery.

Was it like a cold black flood, to die at night, and no stars shining--a
cold flood creeping more and more above the heart? Oh, the wonder on
those poor faces, if there might be, indeed, some fairer harbor lights
beyond death's tide, and gentler music lulling the dread surge, so that
the voyager, with untold joy at last, felt the worn boat-keel loosen on
the strand and drift off from this shore!

Emily and Aunt Cinthia were alone in the room with the dying man. They
were his sisters. His wife had been dead for years.

In the adjoining room sat a group of females, a single candle burning
dimly on a table in their midst. Grandma Bartlett was there, and Grandma
Keeler, and Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow.

Occasionally, a whisper from one of these three pierced the gloom, a
whisper appropriately sepulchral in tone, but more penetrating than any
voice of buoyant life and hope.

I sat in the door with Madeline, Rebecca on the step below, very still
and thoughtful.

The men and the young people, for the most part, were waiting about
outside.

I caught the low murmur of a discussion between Captain Sartell and
Bachelor Lot, who were sitting on the fence, and knew by the attitude of
the listeners gathered around them, that the subject was one of no
ordinary interest. I could not help wondering what those two argued
concerning death and the immortality of the soul.

The tick! tick! tick! of the clock sounded with persistent distinctness
in the room where the women sat, and Grandma Bartlett sighed, and then
came the awful whisper:--

"Ah, death's vary sahd--vary sahd."

Grandma Bartlett, superannuated as she was, was the most trite of the
Wallencampers.

Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow accepted the lifeless phrase with something almost
like a smile of disdain in her magnificent eyes.

"Oh, it's like everything else," she whispered. "It's a mixter! It's a
mixter!"

Once the door of the little bedroom opened softly, and Emily appeared on
the scene.

"He's got most to the end of _his_ rope," she said, dryly, in answer to
the inquiring faces lifted to her own. There was an unnatural brightness
in Emily's tearless eyes, and her tone was as sprightly as ever.

"He don't see nothin', and he don't feel nothin', and he don't hear
n